Jyro117

If you follow what Scott Manley is doing with his beginner tutorial (which I would highly suggest unless you can do Eve sample returns blindfolded), then I'm pretty sure you will get to batteries before it becomes a concern. Remember, rocket engines (except the little guy) will recharge your battery. Using well timed burns can actually keep your battery topped up constantly during the first flights. For example, first actual mission to space should be along the lines of: launch -> 100k, wait then orbital burn at 100k, retroburn to deorbit, decouple and land. Doing EVA/Crew reports each step of the way (via Take/Store data) should net you 200+ science before you even start flying to the Mun/Minmus. At that point you should have expanded the bottom part of the tree enough to get basic batteries, then just slap 2 of the 100 charge ones and should should have more than enough for a Mun mission.

Omg! These look amazing and add some much needed love to adapters/structural parts! Excellent work!

You could say that about a number of parts in this mod. However, that is the issue with mods which are more complicated than just *add more parts to ships*. There isn't really a good way to convey complex interactions to users in the VAB. Fractal_UK has gone the route of making a wiki or posting information here to explain many of these things instead of making ridiculously long descriptions on parts. Besides, instead of simply saying 'its not posted anywhere' maybe you should suggest where to put it, how to word it, etc.

Well as someone else already pointed out using more intakes, I was using 3 intakes (2 radial & 1 ram) to get about 700kN of thrust on the runway. I was afraid the thing was going to rip itself apart before takeoff. I would love for there to be a way to limit the amount of power being used by engines so I don't get insane thrusts on "high"-powered networks. Or at-least have some non-linear scaling of power i.e. 1GW = 850MW performance but 10GW = 6GW. Honestly, I'm afraid for my little green kerbals being cooked by 14GW of microwaves directed at their vessel...

What do you mean by powerful? If you have a 1.25m thermal receiver getting 4GW on the ground a plane will get 600+m/s by the time it hits the end of the runway in atmospheric mode. Note: I might not be able to get the plane above 20km but man can it zip around the kerbin without using fuel. Swap it with microwave receiver/plasma/liquid fuel and I have a 50k dV space plane... My network is only using 3, 3.75m upgraded thorium reactors so I have 14.5GW anywhere near Kerbin and about 4.5GW at 500Mm near my Kerbol relay system. Essentially anything upto Deres has 2.5GW+. I still think microwave transmission is crazy overpowered (but everyone seems to disagree)... I am just starting to work towards antimatter reactors.

RadHazard is correct, they do improve the performance IF you are suffering from power losses (i.e. distance and/or atmosphere). By adding more receivers you are increasing the surface area of what you can receive meaning interference and distance play less of a role. This is also why later in the tech tree you can unlock a large deployable transceiver as it allows really good reception even over long distances.

What a fun little bug, I just encountered this on my Jool spacestation... thankfully someone has figured out how to fix it!

I had to double check about the power decay over long distances since I hadn't noticed it with my missions to Eve and having a series of relays setup around Kerbin's orbit. I flew out to Dres and sure enough the amount of power I was getting was significantly less even when pointed directly at Kerbin. I guess it isn't crazy powerful after all, but I'm sure it will be fine when budgets are actually important (I'm temped to play with Mission Controller Extended just to add more of a challenge and see how some sort of budgeting changes the balance). Atmospheric decay from the surface of Kerbin is only about 25%, which really isn't a huge deal when you consider a 10GW network gives you 7.5GW on the ground. Increasing that would make radio powered planes not an option so hard to say how else to balance it. When it comes to spamming nuclear reactors on the ground it almost is always going to be a win in the current state because it only needs about 500 dV with a bunch of parachutes... which is a heck of a lot less fuel/parts compared to launching them into orbit. Then consider refueling them on the ground... you can drive to them from the launch pad... My best thoughts for a way to balance it out would be to make transmissions in atmosphere be extremely weak but keep receivers at the current level.

I only play career now, which is what I've been using when playing with the mod. Yes, launching isn't a challenge anymore (even without KSPI) and when it is, slice it into parts and dock them in space. I disagree with your limitations for microwave networks since many of them could be solved via relays. Even for missions where I am planning a lander/return, which is pretty much all of them, I can easily setup a bunch of small relay probes around a body because the transceiver is very light-weight and because heat isn't handled for inactive vessels. If heat was handled for inactive vessels I would probably be singing a different tune. I am also coming in with a lot of experience setting up networks for RemoteTech which might mean I'm really good at setting up networks already? I am tempted to say that microwave receivers should have to feed into electrical generators to produce power, or something along those lines so they aren't as incredibly powerful (then make it upgrade in a later node to no longer need the electrical generator?). My issue with microwaves is not how they are really powerful in the late game (which is expected with the mod near the end, and how we essentially have unlimited resources in 0.23), but how quickly a player can build up a decently high power network with really good coverage over the Kerbol system. If you feel it is challenging enough, then we will have to agree to disagree.

This mod is pretty awesome. I have a few comments and concerns which maybe you (Fractal_UK) can address and/or think about. I know other people might disagree with me, but that is to be expected and this is only my opinion: Heat – It is really only an issue on active vessels which kind of takes away from the challenge because I can very easily launch some 3.75m reactors into space with only a couple small radiators. I make sure to get them into a ‘good enough’ orbit quickly and return to space center before they over heat. This means I can easily ignore the heat mechanic for any vessel I don’t plan on actively using… i.e. setting up a microwave network. Microwave Networks - I’m not sure this intended. I see A LOT of people launching massive nuclear power systems into space and setting them up around Kerbin. After figuring out how the microwave networks actually works I realized all I need to do is put a bunch of 3.75m reactors on the ground and face their transmitters to the sky and just put a relay directly above them. In under and our I went from 0MW to 12GW by simply putting a bunch of non-upgraded 3.75m reactors just outside the 2.3km range of the KSC Launchpad/runway and made them face the sky. I went from launching rockets to super crazy powered everything in an hour… Sort of killed the idea of progression and now I just feel crazy powerful. Honestly, microwave networks needs to be looked at because becoming super powerful so fast just kills any sense of progression. Make the atmosphere have a more negative effect on transmission power, make relays generate heat in the background if they are transferring a ton of energy without lots of radiators, make the power decay over large distances. In my opinion, it should be more rewarding to actually get a ship with an onboard reactor into space than just building a quick and dirty microwave network like I did above. Alternatively, maybe consider making microwave transmission its own special node later in the tech tree. As it stands now I can simply build a ship, point it at a relay and I have all the power I could ever dream of. ISRU Refinery vs Resupply Ship – Currently the ISRU Refinery seems vastly weak compared to simply launching resupply ships at regular intervals. This might come from the fact I can send all the UF4 or ThF4 (ThF4 via tweakable in VAB) to my ships and actually sending a lander to the ground and returning with a refinery is more effort. Aluminum just doesn’t feel as useful as simply building ships with more fuel tanks or assembling ships via docking in LKO is always a better option, I couldn’t ever find a time where it would actually be better to use Aluminum Hybrid Rockets for anything. Deinonychus 1D Liquid Methane/Oxygen Engine is very awesome on ground but because it only has a 368 ISP in space I was always using 390ISP LV-909 or 800ISP LV-N engines for any long distance trips. The LV engines usually give me plenty of mileage which made the idea of collecting fuel for the methane engine not worth it. As far as liquid fuel goes it is useful for it, but Kethane kind of defeats the point of it since I can find Kethane on almost all celestial bodies whereas LqdWater is only on a few locations. Side note, maybe it’s a bug but the Methane engine seems to sort of drift to the side like the gimbal is locked when using multiple engines in a circle around a ship. Maybe if science labs couldn’t process nuclear fuel I would actually use the refinery, but as it stands now it just seems to be junk and I can’t find a good use for it compared to resupply ships or mining Kethane. Maybe if I couldn’t easily launch resupply ships with a bunch of Lithium/UF4/ThF4 I would feel the need for using the ISRU. Science Lab’s Science – The idea of just sticking a lab into space somewhere (on Duna/Mun/etc) and it automagically collecting science is an odd concept. While it provides an easy way to get lots of science it seems… too easy? Why not change the mod to add more science experiments (creatures in space labs, bacteria tests, medical exams, psychological tests, etc) and have the vessels need to actually transmit/return the Kerbin instead of spontaneously ‘creating’ science by just sitting in a cylinder and doing ‘research’. Another simple solution would be to add a science cap or degeneration over time per celestial body. It would be more interesting and put more emphasis exploration instead of putting a bunch of science labs on the Mun and pressing time warp. (Same with the Computer Core’s AI). Technology Nodes - I really feel like there should be a separation of technology upgrades from new technology nodes. As it currently stands there are only a few limited ‘choices’ to make when advancing at the end of the tech tree. It would be more interesting to decide if I should get Fusion Power or upgrade my Fission Reactors. Splitting them up into more nodes (even if the total science cost stayed the same) would mean at some point I would have to decide which technology would be a better upgrade. This would be better than a no compromise choice of “yes, I want more powerâ€Â. Take what you will from this, I don’t really expect anything but I figure more feedback can’t hurt.

Very good mod so far, a few comments below about the mod: You really should try to strike up a chat with Fractal_UK (KSPI) and Majiir (Kethane) and maybe look at trying to consolidate all the resource systems. I know Fractal_UK tried to start up that conversation with his Mod Resource API. I really feel like you should make energy consumption more dynamic (for heating/cooling) as the temperature changes quite a bit between environments. I believe it is fairly straight forward to get the temperature outside the vessel and simply scale power consumption with delta temperature. You could even turn this into a gameplay mechanic, display cabin temperature on screen and players would need to add heating/cooling parts to the ship which draw power based on need. So a mission to Moho would require cooling parts and a mission to Eeloo would require heating parts. As the temperature gets further away from the cabin temperature you would need more electric charge to power more of the parts. Summary: Heating/Cooling parts allow you to handle larger differences between cabin and external temperature. Electric Charge scales based on the difference between cabin and external temperature. One bug I noticed with v0.8 [22Dec]: Inactive vessels claim they are running out of oxygen/water but are actually fine because they don’t seem to account for actively running oxygen/water recyclers. It means I have to keep switching to them to make the mod realize the resources are not actually running out. Really annoying when my LKO/Mun/Minmus/Duna/Jool stations to keep bugging me.